Author: halo@bungie.org

We got word from Greg, at Music 4 Games (where Halo Wars is Soundtrack of the Month), that he’s got a new interview with Stephen Rippy, the composer behind the Halo Wars soundtrack. Go read!(Louis Wu 14:32:07 UTC)

The Catfish stopped in to tell us that 2501 Episode 10 is up – it’s good to be careful.(Louis Wu 14:29:54 UTC)

PsH Bling brought our attention to Adam ‘Phoenix-06’ Burn, an artist with a pretty amazing portfolio on DeviantART. The impetus wasn’t the artist, actually… it was a piece called ‘MANTLE’, inspired by Halo 3’s Ark, but astounding in its own right. Browse through the rest of his work – there’s really some fantastic stuff there…

CrypticGuardian let us know that The Bungie Community Group is hosting a community Forge contest – build a Forged version of one of the Mythic Maps, win LIVE subscriptions or MS Points. Read the contest page for full details – and sign up for the group this month!(Louis Wu 14:15:54 UTC)

DHalo noticed that Sumthing Digital has sound clips from the Halo Wars soundtrack – you can get a good sense for what’s on the album, so go listen!(Louis Wu 14:15:20 UTC)

Hawty McBloggy, in keeping with her reputation as a cutting-edge Halo blogger, has published the first ‘Out of Sandbox’ picture – before Sandbox is even in the hands of most of us! (Louis Wu 14:14:08 UTC)

Juesoni let us know that BIohazard Productions is holding a machinima story contest – the prize is that your story will be turned into a machinima, and (if you’ve got a decent mic) you’ll be able to act in it. More details are on their site.(Louis Wu 14:12:10 UTC)

Gamasutra visited Ensemble Studios one last time a couple of weeks ago – and found some cool stuff that’s going by the wayside because the studio’s closing. Some of the artwork shown has found its way to the web before now… some hasn’t. Swing by to give the article a read! Update: RotaJota also noticed…

KP’s job over at Xbox.com sometimes includes playing stuff a little early – as outlined in the top Beat Blogs post, he recently got a chance to play through the Halo Wars demo. You can read the official Xbox.com preview now – and play it for yourself later this week. There’s also an impressions article…

TTL Demag0gue directed our attention towards a new tutorial on Halo3Webcomics – this one is written by The Catfish, and it’s the first in a series of articles that will help you capture good screens for your comic. (Louis Wu 22:47:02 UTC)

Some great Grunt shots are available over at Bungie.net – collected with a simple search for ‘Grunt’ using Bungie’s tagging tools. Go look!(Louis Wu 22:46:38 UTC)

urk found a longish montage collected by the Legends of Blood Gulch team – fun stuff. Always good to play with friends! (Louis Wu 22:46:17 UTC)

The Halo 3 Mythbusters have released their first community podcast – swing by the Bungie Blog for a download link. 45 minutes, 35 mb. Go listen!(Louis Wu 17:37:57 UTC)

According to VideoGamer.com, the downloadable version of the Mythic Map Pack will be released on Xbox LIVE Marketplace on March 3. If that’s true, you’ll be able to buy the three maps on the same day (in the US) as you could acquire them by buying the Halo Wars Collector’s Edition. We’ll wait and see…

Professor Frink sent word of a video showing off Fission, a homebrew 3D engine for the Wii. (It is being built so that homebrew developers can put together studio-quality games without having to write an engine first.) The two flythroughs on the public demo? Zanzibar (the Halo 2 version) and Blood Gulch. Check out the…

About a month ago, we let you know about a video of a reporter from OXM riding around in Weta’s Warthog – the story that goes with this is now online on the OXM website.(Louis Wu 14:46:40 UTC)

Hawty McBloggy ran across a very cool custom-made Master Chief mini on DeviantART – swing by for all the details. What an awsome gift!(Louis Wu 14:44:35 UTC)

TTL Demag0gue let us know that Reclaimer 144 is online – and the virus status has been updated.(Louis Wu 14:44:06 UTC)

So Halo (the original game) was released in November, 2001 – and within a month or so, folks were exploring the boundaries of the maps. 2002 was the ‘Golden Age’ of Halo tricking; the Xbox hadn’t been hacked yet, and Halo PC wasn’t out yet, so folks were getting out of the maps the old-fashioned…

DigitalPh33r released Hard Justice: Episode 10 – the cidy of Esoteria is still screwed up. Thanks, urk.(Louis Wu 20:56:01 UTC)